The Dragon She

She was the oldest of their kind, and She could remember a time before war.

A time when dragonfolk and mankind slithered side by side in the realm of Man. But those memories were as smoky as the warfields now, and dragons no longer fell into worlds of chaos and battle, choosing instead to skip from orderly realm to orderly realm, as if those other places of darkness and blood didn’t exist at all.

This She contemplated as she fell into the realm of Man.

She hadn’t intended to land here, but a call had reached through the waters of the place beyond, had pulled her down into the realm of Man with its distinctive cry. She recognized that distress, it resonated with clingy familiarity. The wail of abandonment.

She crashed downward, snagged the trees, corrupted as they were with manmade metal and sediment. This world was as she remembered it, stinking of malice and suffering. The moment her talons scratched the scorched earth, She knew there was no gain to be made here. She raised her wings and looked into the place beyond, charting her way out.

But there was the cry again. She opened her eyes once more and saw it then, scraggly little thing tucked beneath one of the dying trees. A boy-child, a child of Man. Alone, exposed, his cries weakening as the darkness descended.

She walked closer to the thing, and saw that he was scrawny, and a strange color even for one of mankind. He had surely been cast out for his weakness. Too small to survive, too pitiful to contribute. It would be best to leave him here, let him die as his people deemed best.

The child looked at her, and his cries slowed. He reached out a tiny hand, and She held out a talon.

He gripped it like he would never let go. She felt something in her heartstone, a shift she hadn’t felt in a long time. Before she knew her own intentions, she scooped up the boy-child, and flew away into the place beyond, never once casting a backward thought.

The boy-child grew with ferocity, as if he were afraid that tarrying in his smaller form would have him abandoned again. Soon he was walking with confidence, then he was running, and after that, climbing and tumbling and jumping. Sometimes She had to remind herself that this was a child of Man, and the boy had no wings to sweep him up when he fell. She had to be his wings in those times, but she found that she didn’t mind, and was even a little disappointed when he didn’t need her to catch him.

So she taught him to fall between worlds, taught him to breathe the stardust like fire for his lungs, taught him to close his mortal eyes and see into the place beyond. She taught him like he was her own, like she had formed him in herself. And he learned with the greed known only to those who had once been starving, feasted on her knowledge like a beggar at a banquet. He was never sated, always watching, learning, wanting to know more, more, more.

They were both orphans of their worlds now, thrown away, inconveniently alive. But She felt her heartstone thrum when she looked at him, and knew she did not regret saving him, or herself. Let their very lives be a rebellion, then. She would rebel. Let their happiness be a smoke that flew down the throats of those who had cast them away. Let their home worlds choke, but She and her boy would be skipping between realms, her heartstone glowing, and his fleshheart beating, because they had love, and they had each other.

She took him to all her favorite realms, worlds where jewels grew juicy on velvet trees, worlds where colors were currency, worlds where it never grew cold and children caught sunbeams to tame in their hands. She took him to every realm that had never known war or plague or hunger or cruelty. There were so few of those left, but she saw them with new joy as she watched her boy experience them for the first time.

But no matter how many beautiful, colorful, warm realms they visited, the boy was never satisfied. He grew older and taller and stronger, but the diet of happiness she’d been so careful to prepare for him seemed strangely to cause an opposite effect. She saw sorrow in his eyes grow deeper with every passing realm they visited.

One night, after feasting on moondrops and watching the sky kippers sing their twilight song, She finally reached out her talon to the boy and when he grasped it, she queried the meaning of his sadness. Had not the moondrops been to his liking? Had not the nighttime kippers danced in a pleasing way?

Her boy held her talon and smiled in that way of Man, a smile that She knew meant sadness and longing. When his answer came, she did not understand. He sent her images of darkness, of smoke, of cold, scorched earth, and at the end of it all, a desperate longing to go back. He shared with her the murky, undulating shapes of those who had thrown him away, and that he desired, so strongly, to see them again.

She didn’t understand. Go back? To the ones who had only given him scorn and rejection?

But he was her boy and she was willing to do anything for him, even return to the smoldering, death-like realm of Man.

Together they closed their eyes, saw into the place beyond, and fell between worlds until they found the realm of Man.

They dropped into the forest where She had found her boy all that time ago. He looked around, twisting to take it all in, placing his fleshy hand against one of the bastardized trees as it leaked oil and sap, all mixed together in a grotesque potion.

He looked at her, and for once, She didn’t know what he was feeling. It was strange, and unpleasant, to be disconnected from her boy.

There was a glow in his eyes, something very unlike a dragon’s embers. He began walking, steady on his legs through the forest he’d once crawled beneath as a boy-child. The trees broke away and She saw where he was leading them.

A blackened village beneath the forests’ shade, small, muddy, and nearly empty now.

Together they approached, and soon shouts echoed toward them. It had been many generations of Man since a dragon had moved openly among them.

A man hobbled toward them, stopping them before they entered the village. He spoke words, words of Man that the dragons no longer knew.

But then her boy responded! Had he kept those words locked inside himself all this time? She wondered at it, but the boy soon faltered and looked at her in loss. His words were small, and there was so much more to be conveyed.

Her boy took the man’s hand and as he did so, She saw what she had not seen before. The man was her boy, older and stooped, but the same form. The one who had fathered him, but he did not recognize his boy.

She thundered with anger, roaring fire into the sky. This was the one who had thrown her boy away! This was the wretch, the villain! Now was her boy’s chance to burn them all to the ground.

But her boy grabbed her, connected her to the man who now tried to pull away from them. Her boy held them both tightly, sending them both images of peace and calm.

Why? She poured all of righteous anger into the boy. Why not castrate this village here and now, cut down all who had spurned him? He had the strength now, he had the right. Why did he hesitate? He was no longer that weak, dying child, and the time had come to prove it!

She saw in the older man’s eyes a slow recognition and understanding, one polluted with horror and astonishment. He understood that he should die now, at the hands of the one he had discarded.

But her boy smiled at her his smile of Man, warming her with feelings of worthiness and bondedness. He released her talon and turned all of his communication to the man in front of him.

She did not know what her boy sent him, but the man turned and walked back to his village, stunned and slow within a daze.

Her boy beckoned her closer, and knelt down on the bare ground. He pushed his hands into the rocky soil, and began pulling down memories from the place beyond with a strength She had never before seen.

Yes! Now was the time! A surprise revenge!

But it was not brimstone and ash that he brought to the village that had cast him out. Instead he brought moisture to the earth until it softened beneath them, dewy and fertile. He pulled down memories of warmth until the sky hummed and the darkened walls of the village houses bled blue and pink and cream. He breathed out stardust until above them the sky twinkled, casting down wonder and possibility onto the people who now stood in the streets, mouths gaping, faces wet with emotion.

And her boy, her boy, her beautiful boy, her boy of Man, so unlike the dragons, so unlike her… he laughed for the first time.

She understood then, that she had been as foolish as all of them. She had misjudged him in the very same places they had, only she had presumed to do it for his benefit. Well, they were all blind, She and mankind. To think him weak for his kindness, to rage against him for his mercy.

She drew a talon across her chest, let ruby drops fall to the earth, seeding it with life force. Let this be her gift to the village who had cast out her boy. Let them prosper, let them grow rich and fat with the fruit of her blood.

No gift she could give them could be worth what they had given her, the day she had fallen to the realm of Man.